WND: 20 States Want to Secede!

Sometimes people ask me how I can stand to read the Worldnutdaily every day. The answer is that I find it hilarious. I find it really funny to watch them pretend, quite badly, to be real journalists when they aren’t even third-rate polemicists. Here’s a perfect example. Drew Zahn, a former pastor turned “journalist,” has an article with this amusing headline:

NOW MANY STATES WANT TO SECEDE FROM U.S.

Movement started day after election spreading like wildfire

May states want to secede? Really? Well, no. A few thousand people in 20 states have started petitions to ask Obama to let them secede.

Since WND first reported that residents in the state of Louisiana were petitioning to secede from the U.S., residents in over 20 more states have filed requests with the White House to peaceably break from the union.

Furthermore, the Louisiana petition has topped 14,000 signatures, more than halfway to the threshold needed after which the White House has pledged to respond.

And for Texas, one of the new states to join the fray, the signature count now tops 25,000.

The White House’s We the People website explains that once a petition reaches 25,000 signatures, it will be placed on a queue for response from the administration. The website also maintains a page for previous petitions that have received a White House response.

Wow, you mean a small group of wingnuts and lunatics in those states want to secede and they’ve asked the White House to offer a perfunctory and meaningless response like they have to every other petition that has been filed on that site over the last 3 years? How incredibly uninteresting and irrelevant. It’s not journalism, it’s the Worldnutdaily.

There’s probably a lot of cross-signing of the same people signing for each state’s entry too.

jnorris

I want all the wingnuts to move to Texas and then secede from the Union. I give Mexico three years before they send in troops to secure Texas and make it safe for Mexicans.

erichoug

Between Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma city there was actually quite a large secession movement here in Texas. After OKC it kinda just died. Most of the normal, intelligent people were horrified by the bombing of the federal building. I personally was shocked by the fact that many of the deaths were in a daycare center.

I predict that if Texas did Secede, they would see a mass exodus of people back to the US.

But, that is not likely to happen. Last I heard, the petition on Whitehouse.gov had around 80,000 signatures. Which is about 0.3% of the population of the state. I think a lot of conservatives wouldn’t want to secede as that US flag tattoo will be hard to remove from their asses.

If they do secede though, I will need a place to crash. Any of you damn Yankees wanna volunteer?

jayhawk

My wife asked me if we were allowed to sign the Texas petition since we live in Kansas. She really wants them to leave, as long as they are sure to take George W. with them. She is also hoping most of the wingnuts in Kansas will flee to Texas to join them.

Of course if that happens, it will be kind of lonely here. Could go days without seeing another person.

erichoug

@Jnorris:

And to the rest of you who are thinking of suggesting it.Please don’t dump your garbage in my yard. I have enough problems with the ones that are already here.

http://www.gregory-gadow.net Gregory in Seattle

@Brett McCoy #1 – No, it hasn’t been debunked: Snopes layed it out exactly as Ed said: a few thousand people have signed a petition, and there is no official state action towards secession.

In fact, I read yesterday that the governor of Texas — what’s his name, the loser with the bad hair and “Brokeback Mountain” jacket — basically told the whiners in his state to shut up already.

erichoug

Gregory @#8

The only sensible thing the hair has done in his entire time in office.

chisaihana5219

Let’s get all the people who want to secede and deport them to Texas. Then let Texas secede. They can fund their own Army and build their own submarines. They can build all their own highways and set up their own FAA. No more Medicare or Social Security or FEMA help. The list is almost endless. No CDC, no Federal Reserve Bank or FHA. Then we slap import tariffs on all their oil. We can get what we need from North Dakota and Alberta. Build a border fence around the state where it touches the rest of our states and take the Border Patrol away from the Texas southern border. Let’s treat them as a foreign country. Require passports and visa’s. I’d be more than happy to pay an extra tax to build the border crossing posts on Highway 35. Then we require the same scrutiny to people who want to move back to the U.S. that Canada does with immigrants.

Even if there was any official move towards secession, the US would not allow it: many of the states in question hold the US oil reserves, lie along the Mississippi River (which is extremely important to shipping in the midwest) and/or have very important military bases, harbors and other items of national strategic importance.

There would be no need for civil war, either. Just remind the residents that secession will cut them off from Medicare, Social Security and federal disaster relief the next time a hurricane or a tornado swarm hits, and they’ll cave in faster than a fracking sinkhole.

Draken

@jayhawk: I’ve just read that much of the perceived looniness of Kansas rests with farmers who curse the government whilst receiving large amounts of subsidy. I somehow don’t expect them to leave the union…

http://thebronzeblog.wordpress.com/ Bronze Dog

With all this talk of kicking Texas out, I’m glad I’ve got my thesis defense scheduled in December. If all goes well, I won’t have to stick around when Texas collapses in on itself.

scott

Two Anglicisms come to mind, and I’m torn about which I like best at any given time:

First, going back a ways, from Oliver Cromwell:

“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately … Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

or if I’m feeling belligerent about re-fighting the War of Southern Treason:

“Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!”

machintelligence

The White House’s We the People website explains that once a petition reaches 25,000 signatures, it will be placed on a queue for response from the administration.

hmmmm…time to print up some “America: love it or leave it” stickers with Obama’s face?

MyPetSlug

Surprised no one mentioned, what also makes this hilarious is why would some states (Michigan, New York, Colorado, Oregon, New Jersey, and Florida from the list) want to succeed when a majority of the people in those states *just* voted for Obama? Surely, a pastor turned journalist should have thought of that.

Olav

Ed:

Sometimes people ask me how I can stand to read the Worldnutdaily every day. The answer is that I find it hilarious.

You have a twisted sense of humour.

scienceavenger

@11 I’m not sure the social security argument would work very well, since its pay-as-you-go and there’s nothing stopping Bumfuckistan from starting up their own. FEMA however, is an entirely different matter.

Much more seriously, I think another civil war is not that far fetched. We’ve now had 4 straight POTUS elections where over 80% of the “states” (including DC) have voted for the same party each time, a far longer streak than we’ve ever experienced, and the margins are growing. It may not break out into fullscale war, but it would seem the tinder pile is there just waiting for a spark, such as a deep red state trying to outlaw abortion and shooting at the feds who come to enforce the federal law on the matter.

Why do GOPers hate America?

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/User:Modusoperandi Modusoperandi

raven“The closest thing is Somalia where lifespans are 30 years less than ours, and you can easily die of bullet wounds or starvation.”

And there are New Black Panthers everywhere.

unclejoe

Dana Milbank has a funny take on this in today’s Washington Post. Most of the states that want to secede are taking more money from the government than they give back in taxes. America would be better off fiscally without them.

A lot of state flags in the old Confederate States still incorporate the Conferate flag.

The civil war never ended. Politics is just war carried out by other means.

caseloweraz

One more thing that’s interesting about this is the count of states. I counted that list and checked it twice; both times I came up with a tally of 22.

Just for the record, according to The World As It Is by Chris Hedges (Nation Books, April 2011), twenty-four states harbor secession movements.

raven

The problem with secession is obvious.

A civil war would go nuclear and rather quickly. Nuclear weapons are cheap and easy to make and you can find plans anywhere. In the 1990’s, the Chinese gave out designs to anyone who wanted them and copies are everywhere.

My reasoning is below. If you don’t agree, feel free to laugh. Cthulhu knows, there isn’t that much to laugh about these days.

Old post. I’m sure a war between the North and South is quite possible with secession.

1. We’ve been there before. The civil war. It never ended. Politics is just war by other means. Santayana and the lessons of history.

IIRC, the Confederate flag is still part of the flag of some states in the south or was until recently.

2. The fundie xians are like the fundie Moslems. We just put ours in a box a few centuries ago, a fact they know and hate.

3. Fundie xianity runs on hate, a fact known a century ago. It’s just tribalism. The bible is just hate written down. Genocide was invented by the Sky Monster in Chapter 1 Genesis. The rest is the Israelis genociding the Canaanites and getting overrun by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans.

4. The fundies are End Timers whose best idea is to sit around in a daze hoping and praying that the Sky Monster shows up 2,000 years late and kills 7 billion people and destroys the earth in one Happy Day.

What is the difference between 1860 and 2012? Not much. We just have more powerful weapons.

So is a nuclear civil war possible? Sure. It may not be 100% certain but it is far above 0%.

naturalcynic

Just a point: you do not give up SS benefits if you leave the country, as thousands of Americans in Ireland, Mexico, El Salvador, etc. can tell you.

There will have to a lot of migration of wing-nuts into the seceding state and migration out of crazyland. Would the model for this separation be more like Czech republic/Slovakia or Kosovo/Serbia or India/Pakistan. One of the most striking scenes I remember from Gandhi is the lines of oxcarts moving in opposite directions. This time it will be pickups going one way and Priuses going the other way.

jayhawk

naturalcynic wins!

“This time it will be pickups going one way and Priuses going the other way.”

The question would be, who or what would stop the guys in the pickups from shooting at the Priuses as they went by. Especially, if they were already in Texas, they would probably figure it was leagal anyway.

dcsohl

UncleJoe (#26), that was exactly my first thought when I clicked through and actually read the Texas petition, particularly the line, “Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget…” It’s only balanced because of a huge influx of federal dollars. In fact, in FY2011 and FY2012 Texas actually balanced its budget using stimulus money!

Chiroptera

Since WND first reported that residents in the state of Louisiana were petitioning to secede from the U.S., residents in over 20 more states have filed requests with the White House to peaceably break from the union.

Right, because the President totally has the power to make that decision.

These nuts love of authoritarianism is so strong they have no conception how things actually work in a constitutional democratic republic.

raven42

Let’s see… The Texas petition is up to nearly 100,000 signatures. The state of Texas has a population of 25.7 million. That means that a whopping 3% of Texans have expressed interest in secession.

erichoug

Raven It’s actually 0.4% not 3%

plutosdad

My wife grew up outside of Dallas, went to TCU, then lived in Oklahoma for awhile before practicing law in DC and finally chicago. She said “I never knew why everyone hated texans so much until I moved to DC and I was barely ever around them. Then I’d see someone from Texas once in awhile, and they all were like ‘we are the best! number one! texas rocks!’ constantly, which I never noticed while I was there.”

savagemutt

All we need to do is spread a rumor that signing up on the petition site automatically places you on the FEMA concentration camp relocation list.

Tualha

elpayaso (#21): Here in central Florida, I have actually seen a truck with two bumper stickers: “United We Stand”, and the Confederate flag. On the same truck. Duh…make up your mind.

jakc

@savagemutt

That’s not a rumor.

Ichthyic

Texas actually balanced its budget using stimulus money!

*headdesk*

it’s called STIMULUS money for a reason, fuckwits!

it’s not called: “mis-use this to placate idiots that think a balanced budget during a recession is the most important thing evah!! money.”

Now Vatican City is out because most of them think that Catholicism is Satanic, so hmm, it’s between about eight Islamic theocracies. Somalia is on the list but I expect that the anarchy would make it uninviting to most suburbanite revivalists. Perhaps Saudi Arabia or Iran would be ideal. Plenty of brown people to hate, no guarantee of human rights or freedoms, official oppression of women and homosexuals, religious police…they’ve got all the perks. And if they start trying to convert their Muslim brethren, they’ll get beheaded!!! Perfect!

typecaster

The thing I find oddest about this is that so many people seem to think that secession is a matter of petitions and permissions. There is no Constitutional provision for secession of any state once admitted, and the question of whether a state has the right to secede at all was settled pretty definitively in 1865. Any state that tries is in rebellion against the US, which has the right (and ample capability) to put such rebellion down. There wouldn’t be another civil war, just some police actions, although some would probably be fairly extensive. But the state-based national guard units, to say nothing of the good ol’ boys militia groups, just won’t stand up to the 101st Airborne.

Although I might pay good money to watch them try.

typecaster

A civil war would go nuclear and rather quickly. Nuclear weapons are cheap and easy to make and you can find plans anywhere.

I can’t help but think that if this were actually true, then we’d have experienced a rather noticeable wave of private-action nuclear events over the last 20 years. So far as I know, there hasn’t been so much as a single nuclear attack in anger since August of 1945. If they are so cheap and easy to make, how does it happen that Hamas or the IRA or the Aryan Nations (among many others) haven’t figured our how to do it, and started punctuating their actions by busting cities?

Typecaster, for a few bucks, you can buy a how to book on building nuclear weapons from Amazon.com

For free, you could check google before making an idiot of yourself. It’s well known and documented that the Chinese have given detailed designs to Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. When the Libyan’s deepsixed their program, they handed over their design work. Some of which just happened to be written in Chinese.

Fission bombs are simple. They are based on technology from 1945, in science and technology terms ancient history.

then we’d have experienced a rather noticeable wave of private-action nuclear events over the last 20 years.

This is really stupid.

What is controlled is fissionable material, plutonium and enriched U-235. Plutonium is human made in nuclear reactors and enriching natural uranium to bomb grade takes complicated and expensive industrial plants. You need a nuclear reactor to make one or huge sophisticated plants and a supply of uranium to make the other.

It’s easier to just try to steal the fissionables but no one has managed yet.

There have been attempts to steal nuclear weapons. The Taliban have recently attacked a Pakistani nuclear weapons storage area. Three times.

My comment was in the cntext of the south USA. There are large numbers of nuclear installations in the south, Oak Ridge in Tennessee and Savannah river in Georgia. Plus the south has a large number of nuclear power reactors. There is a nuclear bomb assembly plant in Amarillo Texas.

raven

belfer.ksg.harvard.edu:

What is the hardest part of making a nuclear bomb? Acquiring fissile material

What fissile material is needed to make a nuclear bomb? HEU or Pu

How difficult would it be for terrorists to get fissile materials? Not hard enough

There are hundreds of locations holding nuclear weapons or weapons-usable material and no binding global standards for how well these weapons and materials should be secured. There are more than 130 research reactors with HEU, some of which are in developing and transitional countries.

Once nuclear material is acquired, could terrorists make a nuclear weapon? Yes

U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (1977): “A small group of people, none of whom have ever had access to the classified literature, could design and build a crude nuclear explosive device… [O]nly modest machine-shop facilities that could be contracted for without arousing suspicion would be required.”

Here is a memo from Harvard on nuclear terrorism.

1. The rate limiting step is getting fissionable material.

2. THe US government themselves says they are easy to build with a modest machine shop and this is from 1977. For anyone still confused, we are now in 2012.

3. According to google, all lost or stolen fissionable materials have been recovered. So far.

http://composer99.blogspot.ca composer99

caseloweraz @28:

One more thing that’s interesting about this is the count of states. I counted that list and checked it twice; both times I came up with a tally of 22.

I see what you did there.

Going to find out which states are naughty or nice, methinks?

gratch

States that want to secede from the Union always remind me of teenagers who want to keep living in their old room but don’t want a curfew or parental rules because they’re an “adult” now. But still expect to pay no rent and eat for free.

The effect of anyone who is identified as a “state actor” employing such in an attack on any of the major powers would be brief and ugly in execution and prolly have some lingering after effects. While I have no doubt that such a thing can and might happen I see it as unlikely. Rebel bombers droppin’ nukes on Chitown and Manhattan–not reasonably probable.

http://polrant@blogspot.com democommie

Texas, btw, is often used by U.S. news services as a way of letting those who are too lazy to actually look anything up how big some other country is.

The problem I see is that, approximately three weeks out from their “suckcession” the King and Barons of Texasstan would find out that their new country had become as balkanized as, well, the Balkans.

eric

@24:

We’ve now had 4 straight POTUS elections where over 80% of the “states” (including DC) have voted for the same party each time, a far longer streak than we’ve ever experienced, and the margins are growing.

I chalk that up to greater gerrymandering, lower population growth, the boomers, and less population movement (which probably comes from the incredibly low unemployment we had up until near the end of Bush II). If some smart politician draws gerrymandered borders, and nobody really moves, and the same old people who have voted in the last umpteen elections dominate the voting in the last four – then yeah, you’re going to see the exact same pattern of wins and losses for a generation or two. When the boomers start dying off and if/when working remotely really takes off, I bet you will see a change.

Besides which, I am not sure how you get from “lond standing policy disagreement” to “civil war probable.”

Raven @29: Okay, I am. And in reply to @44 – I find there’s a funny inverse correlation between the amount someone knows about a subject and the ease with which they think it can be done. Based on your comment, I’d bet you’ve never taken any nuclear physics, chemistry, or engineering beyond the undergraduate level, at best. You probably haven’t even taken that. If you’d ever taught college chemistry labs, you’d know that even a clear set of instructions, smart educated people, and the best inventory in the world does not make success in even simple chemistry and physics laboratory operations “easy.”

Seriously folks, the idea of the south seceeding and starting a nuclear war with the north makes birtherism look sane.

eamick

There are large numbers of nuclear installations in the south, Oak Ridge in Tennessee and Savannah river in Georgia.

The Savannah River Site is in South Carolina.

http://polrant@blogspot.com democommie

“There are large numbers of nuclear installations in the south, Oak Ridge in Tennessee and Savannah river in Georgia.”

I think the majority of nuke silos are in the midwest and the majority of nuclear carrying and nuclear capable bombers are similarly deployed–the Caribbean and Central/South America not being nuclear capable in any meaningful way.

Yeah, if the U.S. split again, along the Mason-Dixon line then there would be some Slim Pickens, Dr. Strangelove style, yahoos ridin’ nukes in on “final” THEN the secessionist (read mostly southeastern) states would become a smoking, radioactive wasteland. Some collateral damage–such as 150M or so dead people–might have to be tolerated.

The New Confederacy could, if they wanted to, easily be one of the big nuclear powers in the world.

1. By US standards, billions of dollars is chicken feed these days.

2. Quite a few nuclear weapons plants are in the south. Oak Ridge was where the first Uranium enrichment plant is built, Savannah in SC makes Tritium, and nuclear weapons are assembled in Texas. Plus there are a whole lot of nuclear power reactors also in the south. They make lots of plutonium.

3. By US standards, the south is poor and backwards. By US 1945 standards they are rich. You don’t need too many college educated, smart people to run a weapons program. Places like North Korea, Pakistan, or South Africa did it.

I gave my reasons why secession would likely be followed by a continuation of the 1860 civil war with modern weapons above and no point in rehashing it.

But really, would you trust Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Robert Jeffries, Hagee, or most politicians in Alabama and Mississippi with nuclear weapons? In the New Confederacy, you are going to whether you like it or not.

raven

From the 1960s to the 1980s, South Africa pursued research into weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

Six nuclear weapons were assembled.[2]

It’s just not that hard to make nukes. Any country that wants them has eventually made them including developing places like North Korea and South Africa.

This has been hashed to death.

But would you trust the xian Dominionists, Jesus End Timers, rabid haters, and New Dark Agers that control the south USA with nuclear weapons?

If they seceded you would whether you want to or not.

dingojack

Raven – with all due respect –

“It’s easy enough that South Africa, not exactly the world’s most sophisticated place …”

Cuz they haz some of them black peoplez. (You are aware that SA is not ‘hunter-gather’ territory anymore, right?*)

“Oak Ridge was where the first Uranium enrichment plant is built …”

Tenses – U doin it rong. [Emphasis in the quote, mine**]

“… Savannah in SC makes Tritium”,

Fission, fusion what’s the diff?

“… and nuclear weapons are assembled in Texas”.

And cars used to be made in Detroit – too bad that couldn’t design a motor vehicle to save themselves.

Dingo

——

* So, in your mind, is the south more or less ‘sophisticated’ than South Africa? (What, oh what might they have in common? Hmmmm…)

** see what I did there?

caseloweraz

Despite the large numbers of nuclear weapons in southern states, it’s not clear how big a threat they would be in the unlikely event that a state like Texas actually seceded. I’m not sure that they would be able to set any off without codes from Washington. They might have an expert who knows how to “hot-wire” a nuke, and was willing to. My guess is that they would not. This all depends on the details of the command and control system, which I don’t know. And I don’t want or need to know.

But states, having seceded, might be happy to take a share of the $1 billion currently spent on Nunn-Lugar every year — that’s assuming Russia really does drop out next June with no replacement agreement in place.

heathermighty-lambchop

I’m pretty sure it is a handful of people in Oregon. But I’m okay with Eastern Oregon seceding.

http://polrant@blogspot.com democommie

“1. The rate limiting step is getting fissionable material.”.

It’s ONE of the rate limiting steps.

The U.S. federal gummint, I am certain of this to a very high degree, is well aware of what it takes to build a genuine nuclear weapon and not some zipgun variety.

The explosives used to detonate nuclear weapons are both highly specialized and precisely manufactured. Building the bomb is neither easy, nor is it simple. In addition to other factors, the nuclear material contained in the bomb must be, as is the case with the explosives around it, assembled and contained in a VERY special container–these things are not laying around in army surplus stores.

Like I said, dirty bombs ARE relatively easy to manufacture; genuine nuclear weapons are not.

South Africa, btw, is no slouch in the area of weapons manufacture or high tech.

Iran has very smart people and plenty of equipment and they have been trying to make a bomb for some time now.